


The Way You Look at Me

by Jabberwocky (Sisterwives)



Category: Original Work
Genre: 5 Times, Barnacle Boyfriends, Early Days, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4959298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sisterwives/pseuds/Jabberwocky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first four times Hhectore told Napoleon “I love you,“ and the responses he received in return. Based off the prompt "I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way You Look at Me

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not totally sure about writing out Napoleon's accent -- i.e. ees/eet/zat/zere/etc. If you have an opinion on the matter, please let me know, because if it's obnoxious I can definitely change it! 
> 
> This takes place about ten years ago, at the beginning of Hhectore's and Napoleon's relationship. Any work featuring their early relationship refers to Napoleon as Leon.

## December

Hhectore hadn’t planned on telling Leon that he loved him. At least, not that first time. In retrospect, he should have known better – the warning signs were all there – but it just kind of happened, the words slipping out of him in a post-coital haze. Leon had rolled off of him, chest heaving with exertion, and sprawled in the center of his bed like the entitled prince he was. Splayed limbs tangled in the sheets as he stretched out his body in one fluid, catlike motion.

Graceful, Hhectore thought. He might have found it unusual that Leon enjoyed being called pretty (it had been interesting, explaining to him that in English, “pretty boy” usually wasn’t a compliment), but it was true. Sure, Leon likely would have grimaced if he had been able to see his reflection, but Hhectore privately thought he’d never looked more beautiful than he did at that moment. Sweaty, sticky, but content, with one or two love-bites already blossoming against the creamy white canvas of his skin, his usual meticulous coif mussed up beyond repair…

Looking at him, Hhectore’s heart swelled, and he’d later blame the feel-good endorphins for the way the words spilled out of him unchecked. “God, I love you,” he murmured, reaching over to push the untamed shock of hair off of Leon’s forehead.

Leon froze, an icy silence flooding the room, and Hhectore immediately realized that he had committed a grave faux-pas. The silence seemed to stretch on for an eternity, even though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Finally, Leon answered, stilted words cutting through the air like a knife.

“No, you don’t.” Hhectore didn’t know how to respond to that, struck dumb by the accusation. “You barely know me,” he continued, sitting up and pushing his silky black hair back before letting it fall through his fingers.

Hhectore’s voice returned to him, and he cleared his throat. “I know that you’re sarcastic and witty and you make me happy when I’m around you. And I also know that you’re an egotistical, judgmental brat, and I don’t care. I know that you’re an asshole, and I like that, all of the good and bad parts of you, because it means that you’re real, not just this perfect supermodel that you look like.” He was rambling. He needed to rein himself in before he scared Leon off. “I’m sorry,” he amended. “I didn’t mean to jump the gun like that. You don’t have to reciprocate. Just. I like being with you. That’s it.”

Leon didn’t respond straightaway. There was a loose thread on the bedsheet, and he busied himself by wrapping it around his finger again and again. Hhectore watched as he tightened his grip and pulled until the thread snapped off. “I have to go,” he said, and Hhectore’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach. “Eet’s my muzzer’s birsday. I promised I’d call her.” The excuse rang hollow, but Hhectore didn’t challenge it, letting Leon get up and search the bedroom for his clothes.

“Your shirt’s in the hallway,” he said, watching as Leon tugged on his underwear and too-tight jeans.

“Sanks.” There was another moment of awkward silence that abruptly ended when Leon said, “Bye,” and left the room.

Hhectore dropped his head onto his pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of Leon rustling around the apartment, until he heard the distinctive sound of the front door opening and shutting – perhaps a little too forcefully. He rolled over on his side to check his alarm clock. 11:00 on a Friday night. 8 AM in France. He supposed it wasn’t an entirely unreasonable idea for Leon to be calling someone in Paris, but he wasn’t buying it.

He groaned and ran his hands down his face. He’d fucked up. He wasn’t surprised by Leon’s reaction – he’d been sleeping with him for a month now, and every time they fell asleep in Hhectore’s bed, Leon was gone come morning. Or rather, every time _he_ fell asleep – it was entirely possible Leon just waited until he was out cold to sneak out of the apartment.  He’d grown to accept that that was a reality of sleeping with Leon, and he told himself that he didn’t mind it too much.

But that should have been his first clue that Leon was not ready for the L-word.

He really fucked up.

Hhectore didn’t hear from Leon all weekend, and after his first call went unanswered, he dropped the attempts to contact him. Every time he felt the urge to text or call Leon, he called Barry instead, and it was a testament to their friendship that Barry never hung up on him and listened to all of his worried ramblings, even when they got repetitive.

By the time he got to work on Monday, he was convinced that he was going to be broken up with. He steeled himself for the worst when Leon approached him in the teacher’s room during lunchtime, but his worries were for naught. The French teacher simply sat down opposite him with his own lunch and began ranting about a particularly ostentatious student from his first block class.

Neither of them mentioned Friday night’s incident, and Hhectore was careful to keep it that way.

## February

If there was one thing Hhectore and Leon agreed on, it was that Valentine’s Day was for chumps. They scoffed at its commercialism, rolled eyes at each other as they passed the English teacher’s lace heart and paper cupid festooned door (“Eef I ever put zat shit up een my classroom, take me out to ze parking lot and shoot me”), and did their utmost not to lose their patience when their classes were interrupted by messengers delivering candygrams and roses.

“Were you ever this sappy in high school?” Hhectore asked, watching two teenagers exchange chocolates outside the closed French room door. It was a free block for both of them, and he’d stopped by to keep Leon company as he graded French 2 papers.

Leon gave him a blank stare in response, and Hhectore realized that he did not understand the slang term. “Grossly sentimental about things like Valentine’s Day,” he clarified.

“Oh.” Leon snickered, quietly amused by some personal joke that Hhectore wasn’t privy to. “I wasn’t exactly ze hopeless romantic type, no.”

“Me neither. I don’t think I ever celebrated Valentine’s Day when I was a teenager. Never to this extent, anyway.” Part of that was due to only having one boyfriend during his high school days, and the other boy had been insistent on keeping their relationship a secret. But Leon didn’t need to know that.

Leon glanced up from his work, eyes flicking over to the door’s window that looked out into the hallway. “See, _zat’s_ what I was like een high school.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” The two teenagers had taken to sloppily making out, the boy pressing the girl against a bank of lockers and testing how far he could stick his tongue down her throat. Hhectore rapped on the window and, caught red-handed, the guilty parties broke apart and scampered off down the hallway with a terrified little laugh. “Fucking hormonal teenagers.”

“Children. Gag me,” Leon muttered, trying out a new phrase he’d learned from the aforementioned children (“Did you see Ryan today? I can’t believe you used to date him!” “Ugh, I know, gag me.” “En français!” “How do I say that in French?” “…Eet depends on what zat means.” As frustrating as it was to admit that he didn’t know something, his Advanced French students had been thrilled to be the ones to teach him an English phrase).  He punctuated the statement by vehemently crossing out a wrong answer and flipping over the paper he was grading.

“I can do that,” Hhectore said. It wasn’t an entirely intentional response, but an automatic, flirty quip. He wasn’t prepared for Leon to look up at him, brow furrowed.

“What?”

“It’s just a joke,” Hhectore hurriedly backpedaled. “I didn’t mean anything by it.” He was lying. There was a deep, primal part of him that would have loved to see Leon in a gag, but he quickly tamped that down.

Leon narrowed his eyes, filing that away for later — he suspected that there was an alternate meaning to the phrase that his students hadn’t divulged.

“So what’s all this?” Hhectore swiftly changed the subject with a nod at the assorted boxes of chocolates and cards piled up at the end of Leon’s desk.

“Gifts from my many admirers,” Leon answered. “My students,” he clarified when Hhectore raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Hhectore snorted. “What the hell? None of my students have ever given me candy for Valentine’s Day.” He picked up a box of chocolate and flipped it over to see what was inside it.

“Well of course not. Have you looked een ze mirror lately?” Leon snickered, and Hhectore was struck with the sudden urge to kiss the (ridiculously attractive) smirk off his face.

He restrained himself. “Har, har,” he said, placing the box back on the desk. He could see why the French students would be smitten with their young, attractive teacher, but he suspected that they’d be less fond of him when finals rolled around. As far as he could tell, Leon was a tough grader.

“Well, if you came over tonight, I promise I wouldn’t give you any chocolate. I could make dinner, and we could watch a decidedly unromantic movie?”

“I can sink of worse ways to spend Valentine’s Day.” It was as good an answer as any, coming from him. “I’ll bring dessert,” Leon added, a sly grin playing at the corners of his mouth as he gestured to the chocolates.

—

All in all, it was one of his better Valentine’s Days, Hhectore thought to himself later that night. Leon had rolled his eyes and laughed at the heart-shaped steaks he had picked up at the grocery store, and the dinner he cooked tasted better than any overpriced, ridiculous Valentine’s special at a restaurant.

Leon had picked the movie —some French thing, he still had no idea what it was about, but thank God for subtitles— and they had curled up on the couch and cracked open one of the boxes of candy. About halfway through the movie, he stretched his arm along the back of the couch.

Leon didn’t react to it at first, and Hhectore didn’t expect him to (as enthusiastic as Leon was about bodily contact during sex, he was remarkably averse to affectionate, non-sexual touching). But eventually, the smaller man leaned into him, letting Hhectore’s arm fall around him. Hhectore’s skin tingled at the sensation of Leon resting against his side. He was touched at the gesture —even if it was an unconscious act or merely a product of the glass or two of wine Leon had imbibed, it still meant a lot to him. For once, he was reaching out for contact instead of shying away from Hhectore’s affections.

He half expected Leon to start getting handsy, unconvinced that this wasn’t a ploy to initiate something, but all he did was bite into another piece of chocolate.

“Eugh.” Leon frowned at the half-eaten candy. “Caramel au beurre.”

“I’ll take it,” Hhectore said, trying not to betray his complete and utter lack of chill at the moment.

Leon snickered and handed it over. “Of course you will. You’re my, euh… broyeur à déchets. Ze illegal sing zat grinds up garbage. Ugh.” He scoffed, letting out an irritated puff of air. “Ze joke ees ruined. Fucking English.”

Hhectore had the sneaking suspicion he was being compared to a garbage disposal, and on any other occasion, he would have challenged that, or supplied the vocabulary word, or backtracked and asked about the illegal bit (what?), but all he heard was the word “my.” Realistically, he knew Leon only used it casually, but he liked the idea of being _his_. Even if he was only his garbage disposal.

Hhectore planted an affectionate kiss on the top of his head. “I love you,” he said, keeping his voice light and matter of fact. He’d thought about saying the words again on Valentine’s Day, had planned on saying it later that night, but the time felt right now.

Leon took a moment to digest the words. He pulled away to study Hhectore’s face, eyes squinting in suspicion. “Are we being ironic?”

“Ironic?”

“Yeah. Because eet’s…” he waved his hand abstractly. “Valentine’s Day.”

Hhectore shrugged. “I meant it sincerely, but you can take it ironically if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

“Oh.” Leon settled back against his side, and Hhectore felt a huge rush of relief. “Sank you.”

“No problem.” Hhectore returned his attention back to the screen and popped the chocolate into his mouth. “This is called butterscotch, by the way.”

Leon snorted. “Fucking disgusting.”

## April

Hhectore was nervous. The last time he had been this nervous, he was 18 years old and entering boot camp. That time, he hadn’t had his dog tags yet; this time, he tugged on them to quell his nerves.

It was spring break at the high school, and for most of the teachers, that meant a week of catching up on sleep and relaxing. Hhectore, on the other hand, spent most of the week lying awake at night and trying to keep busy during the day so as not to let his worries catch up to him. He had planned on spending time with Leon during their time off, but it happened that their spring break coincided with the spring break of one of Leon’s friends, who was studying dentistry at the Université de Paris Diderot.

The fact that Leon was young enough to still have friends in school still threw him for a loop sometimes. He had friends who were married with kids in grammar school, while Leon was still a part of the spring break club scene. It was weird. Most of the time, he didn’t think anything of the nine year age gap, but every now and then he was reminded of how different their lives had been before they met each other.

Still, despite the disparities between their upbringings, the differences in their life experiences, the discrepancies in their worldviews, Hhectore was so glad that he had met Leon.

And he was so deeply, irrationally terrified that he wasn’t going to return from his trip back to Paris.

Waiting in the airport, he couldn’t help but think back to one of his frequent conversations with Barry from the past week. He’d talked with him on multiple occasions about his fears and Barry had, as usual, made things worse.  "Wait, so Leon’s back in Paris?” “For now, yeah.” On spring break?” “Mm-hmm.” “With his friends who are still in college?”  “Technically, it’s dental school, but yes. “ “And you trust him to come back to you?” “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Barry.”  “Why are you still sitting here talking to me?! GO TO HIM, HHECTORE! BEFORE YOU LOSE HIM FOREVER!”

Barry had a bad habit of getting him swept up in his theatrics. Hhectore was actually halfway out the door when he came to his senses and realized the absurdity of what he was doing. He had turned back around and punched Barry in the arm for getting him riled up, much to the amusement of his five-month-old daughter.

People were slowly filling up the baggage claim, the belt had started rolling, and there was still no sign of Leon. One of the benefits of being six feet nine inches tall, a veritable giant, was being able to easily look over people’s heads. Hhectore scanned the crowd, trying to ignore the anxiety gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Finally, he saw that familiar head of silky black hair as Leon struggled to yank his suitcase off the belt. Succeeding, he turned around, and maybe it was his overactive imagination, but Hhectore could have sworn he saw his face light up.

He fought the urge to shove past the family of tourists milling around in front of him, but picked his way through the crowd so he could scoop Leon up into a bear hug. Leon let out a small noise of protest at the intensity of the hug, but he still dropped his luggage so he could wrap his arms around him in return. Hhectore acknowledged the strangled “urk” by loosening his vice grip but still didn’t let go, as if he was afraid he would disappear again.

“You came back,” he said, the relief evident in his voice.

“Of course I came back,” Leon replied, voice slightly muffled by the front of Hhectore’s shirt. “My contract goes srough ze end of August.”

Hhectore briefly imagined a future where Leon’s answer would be, “Of course I came back, you’re here,” but he quickly decided that he didn’t care what made him return, as long as he still came back.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he confessed, giving him one last squeeze before pulling back to look at him. “I love you so much.”

Leon’s mouth twisted into a half smile at that. “I know,” he replied, reaching up to brush his hand against Hhectore’s cheek. In one fluid motion, he stepped onto his fallen suitcase, which put him at (almost) Hhectore’s height, and kissed him, heedless of the people around them.

“God,” Hhectore breathed against his lips. “I missed this. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Leon answered, resting his forehead against Hhectore’s, and that was close enough to “I love you too” for Hhectore.

## August

He stopped telling Leon he loved him after that. For a few months, at least. Not because he didn’t feel that way anymore, but because life got busy after everyone returned from spring break. It was crunch time, the end of the school year quickly approaching, and both Hhectore and Leon were busy preparing final exams for their students and wrapping up end-of-the-year projects.

Plus, Hhectore loosened up a little after Leon came back from Paris. The airport showed him that he didn’t have to worry quite so much. Leon knew how he felt about him and it didn’t scare him off, so he let himself relax and just focus on having a good time when they were together.

It didn’t hurt that they had recently discovered that they shared some somewhat unorthodox kinks that they enjoyed experimenting with.

Before he knew it, it was summer, and he spent half of his time in Leon’s apartment and the other half with Leon in his. His ceiling fan was on the fritz, and he’d been saying that he would fix it for months. The truth was, once school was out for the summer and he had three months off where he didn’t have to teach shop, the last thing he wanted was to take on a home improvement project.

And there was something to be said for hours spent under the gently oscillating, ineffective fan, tangled with Leon until the sticky summer heat got to be too much and they retreated from the bedroom to sit in the shower or in front of the open fridge door with a slowly melting tub of ice cream. Those lazy summer days were some of the best of Hhectore’s life, but they were tinged with a faint undercurrent of sadness, because they both knew that August 31st was fast approaching.

Hhectore had spent the last few months steeling himself for Leon’s eventual departure, but no amount of mental preparation could have readied him for the emotions he felt when he let himself into Leon’s apartment and found him kneeling on his bedroom floor, packing.

“Need a hand?” he asked. What he really wanted to say was _So this is really happening, huh?_ , but he couldn’t quite get the words out. There was an unspoken rule between the two of them; they didn’t talk about the subject of Leon’s impending departure beyond the occasional vague comment, as if voicing it would make it more real.

“Non, I’m fine,” Leon replied, and Hhectore frowned at the detachment in his voice. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Leon was starting to distance himself from him. Maybe it was to make the departure easier on him? But still, every now and then, he’d catch him looking at him, with some indecipherable question in his eyes, like he was trying to figure something out.

He hated how hard it was to read Leon’s emotions.

Hhectore crossed the room to where Leon was kneeling and arranging his sizeable collection of boots in the bottom of a suitcase, turning them one way or another to make them fit together.

“Hey,” he said.

“What?” Leon didn’t look up from his jigsaw puzzle.

He didn’t answer.

“ _What_?” Leon repeated, finally glancing up at him, and the guarded expression didn’t escape Hhectore’s notice.

“Come here.” He extended his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Leon accepted it, letting Hhectore pull him close. His body tensed up at first, all taut anxiety and pent-up energy, and it occurred to Hhectore that this was just as hard for Leon as it was for him, and that thought made him feel slightly better. Still sick and a little nauseous if he thought about it too much, but slightly better nonetheless.

After a moment’s resistance, Leon relaxed into his touch, resting his cheek against Hhectore’s chest. Neither of them spoke for a few moments, they just stood there in the muggy August heat (for every time that Leon told him he needed to fix his ceiling fan, he pointed out that his apartment’s AC unit wasn’t any more effective), arms loosely wrapped around each other.

Hhectore turned the same words over and over in his head.

It didn’t need to be said –the air was thick with the sentiment—but Hhectore knew that this was one of the last times he’d get a chance to say it (he had thought about it, played the scenario out in his head a dozen times over, and he didn’t think he’d be able to manage those three words before seeing Leon disappear through airport security). “I love you,” he said now, and the words hung heavy over their heads. “I’m not—” ready for you to leave. I’m not okay with the thought of you not being here.

He stopped himself before the words could slip out, leaving it at “I love you.” He figured there were some things better left unsaid. The last thing he wanted to do was guilt-trip Leon and make him feel bad for leaving now that his contract was up and visa nearly expired. He wasn’t that shitty of a person.

Leon seemed to be struggling with what to say as well. “I…” He hesitated, and Hhectore could feel his uncertainty.

“You don’t have to say it,” he told him, finally bringing up the elephant in the room. He didn’t need an answer —didn’t want an answer—until Leon was ready to say the words. And he could wait as long as it took, because deep down, he already knew the answer. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”


End file.
